Posted
by
chrisd
on Thursday April 18, 2002 @09:45AM
from the voodoo-that-you-do-so-well dept.

During the cavalcade of April Fool's spoofs here on /., one submission stuck in my mind as fascinating and enjoyable -- and a complete scam. It was about an alleged anti-gravity disc, made from a 12" superconducting ring that looked not unlike a brake pad. As luck would have it, I was reading the book Voodoo Science at the time and thought once the April Fools hoopla had died down that I'd do a review of it for Slashdot, so read on if you care to.

Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud

author

Robert Park

pages

230

publisher

Oxford University Press

rating

4/5

reviewer

chrisd

ISBN

0195147103

summary

Robert Park exposes how bad science propogates.

Perhaps I should have posted the story, but in the end that sort of pseudo-scientific chicanery doesn't even deserve the attention that /. would bring it on April Fool's day.

The short review of Voodoo Science is that this is not a book that would make a good birthday gift for Alex Chiu or for that matter Deepak Chopra.

Voodoo Science is a happy little bon-bon of a book for the scientifically inclined. Robert Park is the head of the Washington office of the American Physical Society, and has worked inside the beltway helping the U.S. government and others understand the basics of science so they can make appropriate policy decisions. It is depressingly clear how badly they need it.

While there is a certain level of joy to be found in reading about Mr. Park's exploits debunking cranks and frauds, there is a sad realization that prominent legislators have no clue as to the physical laws that are the underpinnings of science. No, I wasn't surprised, but it was depressing nonetheless to see Trent Lott's name on a resolution designed to push through a patent on a "free energy" device, or Tom Harkin using his power to force the NIH to embrace alternative medicine as anything other than a placebo.

While fun, this isn't a perfect book. It is organized a little strangely, with subheadings throwing off the flow of reading, and at a little over 200 pages it seems too short.Park's mission with this book was not to dissect the great scientific frauds of all time, but I thought he could have spent more time on the issues he did bring up and less on trying to understand the Alex Chius of the world. Mr. Park is probably just trying to be polite, but in my reading of Voodoo Science he comes off as being too soft on the very targets of the book.

The case of cold fusion is a perfect example. His recounting of the famous events was right on, but it just fell flat when it came to to point the finger at Pons, Fleischman and the University of Utah for their complicity in fraud before the Utah state legislature. It is akin to writing a book about Enron and saying about Ken Lay: "It is likely he knew what he was doing was possibly improper."

I'd recommend Voodoo Science as a good gift to a younger reader, as it describes foundations of science in an accessible way. As you've probably gathered, an appropriate name for this book might be "The Laws of Thermodynamics and those that thought it didn't apply to them." As such, the book serves as a decent introduction to critical thinking about the physical world around us.

For your information, Alex Chiu's Immortality Device works. He hasn't died. According to his web site, if you think he is crazy, you are the same kind of person that would have thought that Edison, Einstein and Tesla were kooks. So there, science boy!

Now if only Alex Chiu could design a contraption that prevent ocular damage from looking at his web site.

Now if only Alex Chiu could design a contraption that prevent ocular damage from looking at his web site.

U.S. Patent No. 4587349578

A method of preventing ocular damage resulting from viewing a website is described.

Step 1: Submit a story to Slashdot that includes the URL of the website in question.
Step 2: Wait until the story is published, plus ten minutes.
Step 3: Attempt to view the website. No ocular damage will result.

When Alex Chiu is 150 and takes a DNA test to prove he's the same person, I'll believe it. Personally though, I'm not at all interested in living that long.

Well, I for one would not want to spend 50 or 75 years in a wheel chair in a nursing home.

On the other hand if the time spent is high quality, with compariable quality to what I could have at age 40 or 50 (basically, before every thing starts to really break down badly), then I would be interested.

There is even a bet on this over at Long Bets [longbets.com], that "At least one human alive in the year 2000 will still be alive in 2150."

What's wrong with the placebo effect? It's probably responsible for a good chunk of conventional medicine's positive results as well:)

Actually, when a drug or treatment is tested, its
effectiveness is generally compared with that of a
placebo. Unless the drug is significantly
more
effective than a placebo, it isn't considered a
good treatment.

(Warning: IANAMR (medical researcher).)

So, for instance, let's say you invent a new
vitamin treatment which you claim can prevent
people from getting colds. In order to test it,
you'd get a large number of people willing to try
it out. Half of them you'd have take the new drug
and half the placebo -- without, of course,
telling them which is which. (In fact, in a
double blind experiment, even the nurse
handing out the pills doesn't know, so that s/he
can't accidentally let on to the patients.)

After some period of time, you see how many of
the treated patients have had colds, and how many
of the placebo patients have -- and compare both
numbers with the average for the population, or a
control group. Now it may very well be that the
placebo patients have fewer colds than the
control (that's the placebo effect) -- but if your
treatment is effective, the treated patients will
have even fewer, because both the placebo effect
and the treatment's actual effectiveness are in
their favor.

(Incidentally, the last I read of the matter,
placebo effects work a lot better on colds and
other stress-related ailments than they do on
cancer or AIDS.)

AIDS is a bad example, considering how screwed up the drug trials were [duesberg.com], and as a result of these screwed drug trials, AZT is now considered the "ethically minimal care" and all drug trials are made versus it, not a placebo.

There are other problems with the way the FDA is handling their trials. There is an anti-viral procedure that infuses ozone into a patient blood that has been effective and reducing the HIV, HSV, and other viral counts (because of oxygen's ability to kill virii), but the FDA refuses to allow it to be tested in America because they don't believe Ozone is an effective treatement. Topical creams for HSV have drug trials while peroxide, and effective treatment for the oxygen reasons given above, doesn't, simply because you can't patent peroxide.

When you look into the FDA's actual practices, there is a lot of shady stuff going on, unfortunately.

So says the summary, but the review is mostly about the fact that so many people who make decisions about science are utterly uninformed. Does the book actually tell us how the system got to be this way, though? Like, how so many people get through our educational system with so little knowledge of science, and how such people are permitted to have control over scientific organizations? I wanna learn more.

My personal experience in the IT world for the past eight years is that general scientific literacy among Americans is on the decline. Ignorance of basic scientific principles, methods and tools from co-workers and customers amazes me on a daily basis. Ex. The metric system. The ability to perform simple conversions such as inches to cm and pounds to kg. Ex. The ability to perform math operations more complex than arithmetic. Ex. The ability to interpret statistical data in a meaningful manner.

Given the sorry state of affairs, it is not surprising that people beleive in perpetual motion machines and other devices that violate the laws of thermodynamics.

When asked why they now tip wait staff 25%, a friend of a friend replied "inflation". Just think about that for a second.

Unfortunately, it's the same people that think cutting taxes only benefits "the rich". You cut taxes across the board by 2%, and they all cry foul, like the rich are "getting more". Well hello, they pay more! Don't you understand what a percentage means??!?

Yikes. Your example of the 25% tip sent a shiver up my spine. Inflation???

And you are correct. If you have a hard time with percentages, you are seriously screwed.

Not to pick on Americans, but what has happened to the support for science in this country? Science and engineering degrees as a percentage of total degrees have been on the downward slope since the 1970s, especially for domestic students.

I like the quote from William Gibson, "The Japanese have forgotten more about nerve splicing than the Chinese have ever learned." Might as well apply to Americans. Course, I am being a little hard on us....

nobody wants to pay for it, every year its cut taxes, cut taxes, cut taxes..Where do you think the cuts are going to happes some pork barrek project that keeps a senator in office, or public services?

I could never be elected for anything because would want to make sure no tax cut happened with out what is being cut in the measure, and I think there should be a 25 cents a gallon gas tax that goes into the local schools maintainance and supply budget, and another 10 cent a gallon that goes towards new teacher and better pay.

Let bring languages, science and art back into the schools and teach people how to think.

about 20 years ago, there was some sort of stink over how much waitpersons where making.The orginized body that was 'running things' wanted people to tip more because of 'inflation'.They where being backed by, you guessed, the resturants.The same resturants that raised there prices but never raised there employees salary.So there I am, 17 years old, arguing with some woman trying to tell here, 15% of 10 dollars was more then 15% of 5 dollars.she says, and I quote "15% is still 15%, so its not more money" I'll never forget that.

I read Voodo Science. It's a good book and gives a nice summary of subjects like homeopathy and manned space exploration. What it lacks the most are sources. The author states that he didn't want his book to be riddled with footnotes so as not to confuse the reader, but that is obviously a stupid attitude for a book that is written to encourage people to embrace science. Author Robert Park also writes a newsletter called What's New [aps.org] about developments in Voodo Science.

Park's book should be read together with another one: Trust Us, We're Experts! (Amazon [amazon.com]) by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton. While there is a lot of "junk science" out there, there is at least as much corporate sponsorship behind efforts to discredit real scientific work as such. See also this story [earthisland.org] about PR efforts to discredit global warming, and my related K5 comment [kuro5hin.org].

The author states that he didn't want his book to be riddled with footnotes so as not to confuse the reader, but that is obviously a stupid attitude for a book that is written to encourage people to embrace science.

Oh, well, "obviously". On the other hand, is it possible to just present science in an entertaining way that encourages people to do more research on their own without weighing it down to the point that it's unapproachable? Or to put it another way, should a book about dinosaurs for five year olds be fully annotated with long treatises on alternative dinosaur theories?

See also this story [earthisland.org] about PR efforts to discredit global warming,

The question about global warming is not weather the globe is, in fact, warming, but whether 1) mankind is the cause, 2) how much warming really matters, and 3) whether the earth has self-equilibrium processes that we don't understand.

By far, most of the "junk science" is on the global warming side. Only the most arrogant idiots or the biggest fools think we have even a remote understanding of climates. The biggest junk science factory today are computer climate models. They are worse than useless, because they mislead people into thinking that the models are "statements of fact" when they are just incredibly crude tools that may or may not help us find the truth.

Never has a title been more apropos as Trust Us, We're Experts! as it does with Global Warming.

He says in the book that there's is no valid scientific reason anymore to send people into space when sending robots has turned out to be a much more cost effective way to do scientific research in space, and that the people coming up with scientific motives to justify the huge cost of manned projects like the ISS are basically grasping at straws (e.g. "It will help us understand the effects of weightlessness on the human body").

He has a point. Much as I hate to say it, humans are ill-suited for space exploration and should stay here. We weigh too much, require too many accoutrements such as life support systems, and we generally aren't willing to consider one-way trips.

Humans are ill-suited for all sorts of things that we do every day. Scuba diving, mountain climbing, crossing oceas, flying across continents, mining, handling hazardous materials, living in extreme climates. Because we felt doing these things were desirable or important to our long-term well-being, we devised means to accomplish them. Now they're second nature. Manned space exploration is really the same way. We've only really been at it for around 50 years; it's hardly time to give up already.

Besides, I've always believed that the only really vital goal of space exploration is to eventually set up permanent manned colonies. Robots can assist in gathering information and manage the prep work. But if you ever want to get all our eggs out of this one little basket then you'll have to send people out there sooner or later. We might as well get ready.

He has a point. Much as I hate to say it, humans are ill-suited for space exploration and should stay here.

Anyone attempting to justify human spaceflight on economic or scientific grounds will run against the inevitable conclusion: robots can do it much better and much more cheaply than we can.

But that's basically irrelevant. Regardless of the economic arguments, as long as there is an opportunity to go, there will be people who want to do it. It is a significant part of human nature to explore the unknown and push the frontiers -- there's no economic or scientific reason to climb mountains, cross the Antarctic, or anything similar. Exploration of all kinds -- and space exploration in particular -- galvanize the entire human imagination in ways that very little else on Earth does. Why else would people be lining up to follow Dennis Tito's example in blowing a large fraction of their personal wealth -- not to mention putting their lives at significant risk -- just to see what Earth looks like from orbit?

Personally, I think that if launch costs could be reduced by a factor of 10, we would see nonprofit, private organizations conducting space exploration with corporate sponsorship, in the same way that other contemporary exploration activities occur today...

After buying a couple of John Gray's books, I was scratching my head on some of his theories. While some seemed like common sense, others smelled strongly of stereotypes and assumptions the quality of which one can find in any sit-com.

A while back I did a litter searching to find out a little more about the authors of the Mars and Venus books. Here's [compuserve.com] a grain of salt to take with them.

If you really understand gravity, then you're probably the first (yeah, I'm sure some first year physics students can expound about gravity, incorrectly believing that they understand what gravity is and how it works, but the reality is that gravity is mostly an unknown with some guesstimates and postulations [what is the "Speed of Gravity"?] : An invisible, almost magical attraction between objects). As such, the idea that gravity is a wave or a force and therefore can be blocked, or shielded, isn't that absurd. I'm not a physics buff by any measure of the imagination, but it is one of those fascinating fields that can make one curious. IEEE's Spectrum magazine had a fascinating story about how little has actually been proven in the field of quantum mechanics, and it really is stunning.

Carl Sagan's _The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark_. Here's links to two different [2think.org] reviews [epinions.com].

Stephen Jay Gould, almost everything he's ever written but particularly The Mismeasure of Man [wwnorton.com].

Then there's the classic, much older but still frequently cited Charles Mackay's _Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds_ online.
(entire text available courtesy of Gutenberg)part 1 [upenn.edu] part 2 [upenn.edu] part 3 [upenn.edu]

...and a complete scam. It was about an alleged anti-gravity disc, made from a 12" superconducting ring that looked not unlike a brake pad.

This is far from being consigned to the scam basket (although it may end up there). The easiest way to demonstrate this is to note that NASA has invested in research [space.com] to try to replicate Podkletnov's [amasci.com] results.

The interesting thing about gravity is that it isn't well understood by modern physics. We know how it behaves (we think) but we don't know what causes it really. This makes it equally ripe for psuedo-science as for breakthrough science. In any case, an April Fool's day scam it isn't.

There are a bunch of other links here [amasci.com] and a good overview here [rognerud.com].

See what Nobel Laureate and professor of Physics Brian D. Josephson has to say [cam.ac.uk] of Robert Park.

In Washinton Post, Charles Platt comments like so [washingtonpost.com].

For a good commentary on Park vs Cold Fusion, go to the source [mv.com].

"When I began my physical studies [in Munich in 1874] and sought
advice
from my venerable teacher Philipp von Jolly... he portrayed to me
physics
as a highly developed, almost fully matured science... Possibly in one
or
another nook there would perhaps be a dust particle or a small bubble to
be examined and classified, but the system as a whole stood there fairly
secured, and theoretical physics approached visibly that degree of
perfection which, for example, geometry has had already for centuries."

If you actually read Mallove's review of Park's Voodoo Science, you'll find that the party guilty of poor science is Robert Park himself. I'd say it's even rather embarassing for Park.

And how come Robert Park doesn't mention the tokamak hot fusion fiasco? Could it be it's too close to home? Could it be it's competing for research funding?

Making fun of scientists on the cutting edge is nothing new, let's take just one example:

"A Severe Strain on the Credulity

As a method of sending a missile to the higher, and even to the highest parts of the earth's atmospheric envelope, Professor Goddard's rocket is a practicable and therefore promising device. It is when one considers the multiple-charge rocket as a traveler to the moon that one begins to doubt... for after the rocket quits our air and really starts on its journey, its flight would be neither accelerated nor maintained by the explosion of the charges it then might have left.

Professor Goddard, with his "chair" in Clark College and countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react... Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools."

-- New York Times Editorial, 1920

There are of course countless more examples. Go read some history of science.

I absolutely cannot believe the level of level 2+ comments from supposedly intelligent people here who think there's something to homeopathic and alternative therapies. Most of them obviously haven't read Park's book, nor would they probably care to.

As for homeopathy, this is a practice that relies on diluting chemicals or extracts in water until there's no possibility of that chemical being in the liquid administered, relying on the "water memory" of the chemical for efficacy. Despite never having been shown to be efficacious in double-blinded clinical trials, it's ridiculous from the view of chemistry, physics, and what we know of the universe, due to a little problem called Avogadro's number (about 6.3x10^23, the number of molecules in one mole of a substance). Each of these serial dilutions of extracts causes the concentration to descend so far below avogadro's number that there is no chemical in what is administered. Park demonstrates in the book, using simple high school chemistry (which obviously many here are having difficulty remembering) that homeopathy, as practiced by the homeopathic industry, is simply the drinking of water.

It all has to do with a little something known as proof of efficacy, the most important part of any clinical trial. As one doctor said regarding the recent governmental report on "alternative" medicines (to paraphrase), "There are only two kinds of medicine -- that which works and that which doesn't. If something that's considered to be alternative is shown to work then it's adopted. If not, it is not."

People, there is medicine and there is quackery. The double-blind clinical trial is the only way of distinguishing between the two, and even then conditions have to be constructed carefully to insure accurate results. Thank God the FDA doesn't rely on the anecdotal evidence of family members, the testimonials of paid spokespeople, or the promises of the herbal supplement industry.

The FDA was created to help people see through all this snake oil & empty promises, but now, through exemptions for "herbal supplements" pushed through congress, led by Sen. Orrin Hatch, we have a renaissance of this sort of lies and deception of the populace. Unlike homeopathic remedies, herbal supplements many times do have powerful agents in them. Only because of their designation as a food and not a drug, they get around FDA requirements for purity, consistency, and efficacy. Because of widely varying concentrations of agents including ephedrine and hormones, and a level of quality that runs the gamut due to a complete lack of quality control, we have a multibillion-dollar industry whose products have been reported to cause strokes, heart disease and liver damage. In one report in the LA Times last month it was reported that the makers of an herbal supplement in Utah were adding crystal meth to their weight loss product, causing a spate of strokes & heart conditions in middle-aged people before being caught & shut down.

It's a tragedy, and it's a needless danger created because the average person has little more than an elementary school level of understanding of science. And I can't believe that so many of you are gullible enough to be taken in by these hucksters. Please, read and study before putting drugs in your body that aren't approved by the FDA.

Your statement is a lie. The September 1997 issue of the Lancet published a metastudy which summarised 89 double-blind trials of homeopathic medicine and concluded that it was not possible to dismiss the results as chance. Here [webmd.com] are a few such references.

Furthermore, your reference to Avogadro's number is ignorant. We actually don't understand dilution very well, but we do know that the simplistic model you assume (one in which you simply divide the moles of active agent by moles of water) does not describe the results of multiple dilutions very well at all. In actual fact, molecules often "clump" together, with more or less unknown effects on their agency inside human beings.

The tragedy, and needless danger, is created by know-it-all types who dismiss anything they don't understand rather than acting like grown-up scientists and doing research.

Oh yeh, and

As one doctor said regarding the recent governmental report on "alternative" medicines (to paraphrase), "There are only two kinds of medicine -- that which works and that which doesn't. If something that's considered to be alternative is shown to work then it's adopted. If not, it is not."

If you believe this, why all that piss, wind and vinegar about homeopathy? In the treatment of allergies and osteoarthritis, homeopathic remedies have been widely adopted. Around 32% of French and 42% of English general practitioners regularly refer patients to homeopaths. Because, presumably, they care more about making people better than about looking good in front of the Science Police.

Your statement is a lie. The September 1997 issue of the Lancet published a metastudy which summarised 89 double-blind trials of homeopathic medicine and concluded that it was not possible to dismiss the results as chance.

If you reference an article, you should read it. Some quotes from that 1997 study:

"The results of our meta-analysis are not compatible with the hypothesis that the clinical effects of homeopathy are completely due to placebo. However, we found insufficient evidence from these studies that homeopathy is clearly efficacious for any single clinical condition."

"Our study has no major implications for clinical practice because we found little evidence of effectiveness of any single homeopathic approach on any single clinical condition."

How does: "The results of our meta-analysis are not compatible with the hypothesis that the clinical effects of homeopathy are completely due to placebo" differ materially from "it was not possible to dismiss the results as chance"? I very carefully did not present the study as a "homepathic confirm", simply as evidence that the original poster's statement that there had been no double blind trials which provided any evidence for it.

And your selective quoting of "Our study has no major implications for clinical practice because we found little evidence of effectiveness of any single homeopathic approach on any single clinical condition." is positively Orwellian. This was a meta-study of 89 separate studies, most of which analysed the effects of homeopathy in different conditions. Given that, it is quite obvious that it would never find effectiveness of any single homeopathic approach, because that wasn't what it was looking for. You wouldn't find evidence of this kind for penicillin if you took a metastudy of its use in 89 different conditions.

And just because we don't understand how something works doesn't mean that anyone can go and make stupid claims about it, either.

We don't have a unified theory of quantum physics and gravity, but that still doesn't mean that I have to entertain some fraud who claims a unifying theory based on organic waves and universal harmony. Nor do I have to believe that magnets will cure AIDS, even though we have no cure for AIDS yet.

All I expect from a scientific claims is this: A description of an accepted/reviewed experimental method that gives statistically concrete results that can be reproduced in any setting.

If physics says it's impossible, then that's a pretty strong argument that it doesn't work. As someone else said, if there's all this evidence for it, why don't these companies selling this stuff have FDA approval? All they would have to do is run the same tests ordinary drugs do.

Until very recently, bumblebees were unable to fly according to our best models of aerodynamics.

BULLSHIT!!!

I was trying to not comment on this old canard, but this is the third comment in this thread saying this and I couldn't take it any more.

When exactly is "very recently"? "Best models" according to whom?

It is true that under one simple approximation of fluid mechanics -- the one attributed to Bernoulli that discounts non-linear effects, which makes it easy for high-school students to analyse -- insects' wing-loading is too high to be explained. This doesn't even come close to being "our best models of aerodynamics".

If you didn't learn simple fluid mechanics in high-school, blame it on your pathetic school system. After all it's just plain conservation of energy and momentum. If you feel like doing some research, look up the Navier-Stokes equation -- from the 19th century.

Anybody can explain anything, but first there has to be something to explain. Observation precedes explanation. Until a phenomenon is observed, there's no point in trying to explain it. A hallmark of quacks and cranks is pointlessly complicated explanations of phenomenon that cannot be consistently repeated. If I give you some extremely dilute chemical and you drink it and feel better, is that a real phenomenon? Or would you have felt better anyway? Or would you have felt better if I'd given you distilled water and lied about what was in it? Double-blind clinical trials by disinterested parties that are reviewed and confirmed by the FDA are real, reproducible observations. Something your aunt and your cousin and an MD told you is not.

Clouds, blue sky, and green trees are real phenomena. You can observe them independently of me. Anyone can see that they exist. We can then come up with explanations. Those clouds? That's caused by cotton, blowing on the wind. Blue sky? It's a result of all the water in the air. Green trees? The green is the result of a fine film of bacteria that cover leaves. These are all interesting explanations, but they are completely false. However, the phenomena they describe are as real as the table my computer sits on.

On the other hand, there is this tiny pink dragon sitting on my shoulder. Can you explain it? I can't. He says he's the last of his kind and that only I can see him. makes no sense to me, but it's TRUE. Don't dismiss what you can't explain. Oh, wait...you're not dismissing that idea because you can't explain it; you're dismissing it because you can't observe it. I claim that a phenomenon exists, but you can't confirm it. Why bother to try to explain it?

Of course, if there's money to be made in trying to convince you of the existence of my pink dragon, then the sky's the limit...all I need is to find loads of gullible and poorly educated people and sell them my book on finding their own pink dragon. Perhaps the dragon merely needs to be diluted before he's observable.

"Just because we don't understand how something works, doesn't mean it doesn't work."

Right...what the Chinese described as "chi" or "life force" and developed acupuncture based on, we now have scientic evidence to substantiate. Just because we don't really think it is some magical "life force" doesn't make their *model* any less signifacant. I could call atoms "magic gnomes" and planets "big cookies"...as long as my model is coherent, who the fuck cares?

WRONG. Testosterone, as a steroid, like cholesterol, can be and is absorbed by the digestive tract. I will give you that it's an exceedingly poor route of administration compared to injection. Neveretheless, the point is that herbal remedies, by being less pure and having less knowledge of what is in them, makes them potentially very dangerous.

The Skeptic column in the March, 2002 issue of Scientific American had a good summary of pseudoscience titled Hermits and Cranks [sciam.com].
They quote Martin Gardner's characterization of the pseudoscientist. Written in 1952, they are amazingly relevant 50 years later:

(1) He considers himself a genius.

(2) He regards his colleagues, without exception, as ignorant blockheads....

(3) He believes himself unjustly persecuted and discriminated against. The recognized societies refuse to let him lecture. The journals reject his papers and either ignore his books or assign them to "enemies" for review. It is all part of a dastardly plot. It never occurs to the crank that this opposition may be due to error in his work....

(4) He has strong compulsions to focus his attacks on the greatest scientists and the best-established theories. When Newton was the outstanding name in physics, eccentric works in that science were violently anti-Newton. Today, with Einstein the father-symbol of authority, a crank theory of physics is likely to attack Einstein....

(5) He often has a tendency to write in a complex jargon, in many cases making use of terms and phrases he himself has coined.

"Home. I have no home. Hunted, despised, living like an animal. The jungle is my home. For 20 years I have lived in this jungle hell. I was classed as a madman, a charlatan. Outlawed in the world of science, which had previously hailed me as a genius. Now here in this jungle hell, I have proved that I was right. Here, I will create a race of atomic supermen who will conquer the world!Pull the string! Pull the string!"Dr. Eric Vornoff, Bride of the Monster (one of Ed Wood's classics).

The anti-gravity disc has been around for over 25 years. It was perfected by "Tensor" and is called "Tensor's Floating Disc". People, it's a level 1 spell for goodness sake! Doesn't anyone keep up with the literature?

"Geeks" know better than to be suckered by alternative (see snake oil) morons like you. Go strap on your electric ab-builder, take your placebo homeopathic pills, slip on your magnetic wristbands and copper bracelets and get a clue about how SCIENCE works. "The FAA and the AMA are the Microsofts trying to keep proven-better-but-less-expensive treatments down."Shut the fuck up.

You take some substance, usually related to the disease by random intuitive way, add it to water, and then dilute it with water. They dilute with water so heavily, that modern physics says there should not be even an atom of the non-water ingrediant left.

There are two reason why this is mocked. First is the whole dilution thing; what you've giving people is water. Second is the fact that from we've seen of the rest of medicine, there's reason more than a very tiny percentage of intuitively picked ingrediants should work; even if the fundamental theory works, it should take many, many tries to find the right ingrediants.

The short answer is: It's all cultish pseudo-scientific bullshit, and the Scientific community is still waiting for homeopathy's promoters to actually do some real Science to try to prove its validity. My guess is that we're as likely to see some real evidence from these guys as we are to have John Edward go for (and win) the JREF million dollar challenge.

Homeopathic medicine is based on the crackpot idea of one Samuel Hahnemann, "Like cures like" (the Latin version looks a lot more impressive, but I don't remember the precise quote). In other words, he came up with the <sarcasm>brilliant</sarcasm> idea that, for example, if you have a fever, you should take some medicine that would raise your body temperature. (Some of the "likenesses" are pretty silly, e.g. to cure hepatitis, take something colored yellow.) Giving people something that would make the symptoms worse probably wouldn't fly even in the world of "alternative medicine." So Hahnemann diluted the substance. I mean, really diluted. To paraphrase the late Douglas Adams, you may think that one part per trillion is diluted, but that's nothing compared to homeopathic "medicine." Homeopathic medicine is so diluted that essentially certain that not even a single molecule of the "like" substance remains.

Ah, but then there's Hahnemann's other brilliant idea--the medicine "remembers" that the stuff was there! (And the more dilute the solution is, the more powerful it is--hence the homeopathic joke, "Did you hear about the guy who OD'd on homeopathic medicine? Yeah, he forgot to take it.") So, according to homeopathic practitioners, the fact that you're taking water, or a sugar pill, or whatever, doesn't matter, because at one time it contained something that would make your symptoms worse and hence will, they say, cure you.

Now, consider tap water. At one time or another it's had just about every possible substance in it that homeopaths have ever used--so if homeopathy is true, shouldn't drinking tap water keep you in perfect health?

The perverse part is that homeopathic medicine is perfectly suited for today's litigious society; because there's nothing in it but water or pill substrate, it can have no side effects, and hence will never give rise to a lawsuit...never mind that it's totally worthless.

I went to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and I've never heard of Ann Arbor University. Google hasn't either. Maybe you meant you meant that you teach at UMich but you're not listed in the university directory [umich.edu]. I'm just trying to understand who's speaking here before I decide on your credibility.

You might be overstating the case somewhat. Sure, many (if not most) "alternative" medicines work. Sure, there's a case to be made that conventional doctors might perhaps have an interest in blocking general use of some of these treatments. But I don't think we can really classify "alternative" medicine in general as better. I'm certain that some of them are, but we can't completely throw out surgeons in favor of St.-John's-wart just yet.

For instance, they entirely reject the idea of homeopathic medicine. What they neglect to mention is the hundreds of studies proving the effectiveness of this treatment for everything from hangnails to brain tumors.

Because hundreds of kooks claiming shit in unscientific ways isn't the same as Scientific studies using rigorous methods to discover the nature of reality?

You can claim studies with proof as all you want, but until you really and truly embrace the Scientific method, and show results that a reproducible in double-blind studies that aren't equivalent to placebo control groups, you're going to continue to be laughed at. You remind me of the Christian Scientists who continue to claim to have scientific proof showing the flood and the Genesis creation story.

I encourage everyone to bookmark James Randi's [randi.org] web site as a great source of information for the scientifically mind skeptic.

I'd like to see a scientific, double-blind studio showing the efectivity of homeopatic treatment on a specific disease on animals. Control groups, the whole scientific thing. I'm sure you've seen one, since you are so clear it works, so I'd really appreciate a link, a book title, a researcher's name, anything.Or the same thing with humans. Really. It would do wonders for homeopaty's credibility.

That was an interesting read, I appreciate it:)I was cured of a pretty hard (potentially lethal) case of allergies by homeopathy, so I'm not exactly sceptic. On the other hand, the chemical counterargument about quantity is pretty solid. That's why I'd like more scientific studies on homeopathy.Incidentally, it appears to be gaining ground, at least from the article you kindly provided: "New survey of primary care physicians who are members of the AMA revealed that an astonishing 49% of them expressed interest in training in homeopathy (British Homeopathic Journal, July, 1997). This survey was conducted by researchers at the University of Maryland. These same researchers also surveyed Maryland family practice doctors and discovered that 69% expressed inter est in homeopathic training (Journal of the American Board of Family Practice, 1995, 8, 361-6). Both of these studies show an impressively high degree of interest in homeopathy".

If homeopathic medicine doesnt work, and its just the placebo effect, then how come vets use it successfully to treat animals?

Because many diseases go away on their own? If you want sceptics to find it interesting, then put it through a scienetific, double-blind test. There are too many cases where something looked good and bombed the double-blind test. If we should throughly test a new medical technology that makes sense, then we should demand at least as much testing on a new medical technology that breaks the laws of physics.

I take EXTREME issue with the idea that there hae been HUNDREDS of "studies"..where studies means an FDA approved double blind clinical test.

For the rest you you out there who think hemeopathic medicine is for real(let's not get into whether or not its safe)..please check this article out [quackwatch.com]

Why don't the homeopathic remedy manufacturers go thuugh a series of FDA clinical studies to be come FDA certified drugs? If this stuff actually works...why are the remedy manufactures using a loop hole in FDA statues and marketing this stuff as herbal suppliments and not as effictive drugs. I'll tell you why...these remedies would not be found to be proven effective for most of the things word of mouth advertising claims. Oh yeah I'm sure hidden in many of the remedies being pushed at the super crunky health food store down the road from me will contain something that helps prevent or cure one or two specific illnesses. But we can't be sure until they actually conduct FDA trials and get FDA certification. And quite frankly taking this stuff can be DANGEROUS...especially if you are on ANY type of real drugs. homeopathic remedies don't have to do any sort of drug interaction testing. Is this stuff safe for a healthy person to take...probably...there is a long track record of other ignorant people taking this stuff without dying. But is it safe if you are also taking ANY modern scientificly researched medications? No way. Don't mix medications with out talking to the docters who gave you the idea to take the medications..even herbals can interfere with how modern FDA approved prescription or over the counter drugs work

This is WHY we have the FDA...if something is an effective drug for a certain illness...the FDA is there to test and certify that. If you are taking any medicine (no matter how ancient it is) sold by a company and placed on retail shelves...you should DEMAND that that they get FDA approval certifying that what they are selling you really works for what you think it does. There is a reason the homeopathic remedies in the store don't actually make specific claims to help any specific illness.

I can understand desperate people taking experimental drugs for live threatening illnesses. But to sell this stuff over the counter without making any specific claims on the label...and letting word of mouth spin a tale of fanasticly wonderful benifits is a slap in the face to the benifits this past century as seen thanks to the explosion of the understanding of how medicines work and the great strides modern medical science have taken to improve the quality of life for those who hae access to it.

Please go back to living in your flat world, with the sun circling overhead, and take your ancient medicines with you.

That's the problem - everything from homeopathy and "crystal healing", to herbs, low-fat diets and massage therapy, is classified as "alternative" when compared to industry-standard cut 'n' drug practices[0].

Some "alternative" therapies (herbs, massage, acupuncture[1]) have plausable physiological mechanisms. Of course, not all therapies in these categories have the effects that are sometimes claimed for them; but the idea that eating a plant, getting rubbed, or being pricked with needles can have definite effects on the flesh should not be surprising to anyone.

Others (such as many ch'i/ki/energy therapies that involve interaction between the pracitioner and the patient) have a more psychosomatic[2] action - disease and healing have a larger psychological and sociological component than we often think. Unfortunately sometimes practioners of these therapies focus their explanations on mystical energies or somesuch, and skeptical investigators often focus on these deficient explanations rather than on the question of whether the patient obtains relief.

I practice reiki. I've found it effective, on myself and others, for minor physical and emotional disturbances. But I believe it works though mild bodywork, the physiological reaction to touch, and the powerful healing effect of ritual, and not by mystical energy flowing into my crown chakra - but still, the best way to obtain the necessary state of mind is to think about mystical energy flowing into my crown chakra. It's sort of like what ESR talks about in "Dancing with the Gods" [tuxedo.org]. As he puts it,

Magic is loose in the world. It is not the magic of fantasy -- no would-be violators of the laws of physics need apply. Real magic acts
in and through human agents. The two forms of practical magic are healing and divination. Healing works because human minds have
more control over their bodies than we normally think; divination works because humans know and perceive more than they are
consciously aware of.

...

Feel free to hypothesize that I've merely learned how to enter some non-ordinary mental states that
change my body language, disable a few mental censors, and have me putting out signals that other people interpret in terms of certain
material in their own unconscious minds.

Fine. You've explained it. Correctly, even. But you can't do it!

And as long as you stick with the sterile denotative language of psychology, and the logical mode of the waking mind, you won't be able
to --- because you can't reach and program the unconscious mind that way.

Another category of "alternative" therapies would be those that are completely self-activated placebos. Homoepathy would seem to fit here. (However, be aware that many remedies marketed as homoepathic do contain enough active material to have an effect, and should really be classified as herbal.) Some may be presented by believers, some ("psychic surgery") may be presented by con men.

Finally there are some that not only don't work, but are actively unhealthy.

It's a pretty broad range of practices to be lumped under one label.

([0]Which certainly have their place. If my body gets majorly damaged, please take me to the local trauma center and drug and cut me as appropriate. However, when all you have is a scalpel, everyone looks like a surgical candidate...)

([1] Speaking strictly of endorphin release and nerve stimulation, not meridians of ch'i, which would fall into the next category.)

Yes, this is to be granted. However much of alternative medicine is a modern form of snake oil, except for one extremely important point:

Those selling it actually believe that it works, making it much more dangerous.

granted, there is the possibility that some of these methods work, but after removing the placebo effect, many (if not most) do not stand up to rigorous empirical tests. The problem lies in the fact that most people do not even come close to understanding scientific method... people often fear and mistrust what they don't understand. (albeit selectively; it doesn't stop that many from climbing into a plane or getting behind the wheel of car... maybe it should).

The problem is that in most cases, 'alternative' means 'unproven' (or 'unproveable'). Any 'alternative' treatment that proves effective when studied in a controlled manner would likely be embraced by the medical system and cease to become 'alternative'.

On the other hand there are some 'mainstream' therapies like acupuncture and some parts of chiropractic that don't stand up to scientific scrutiny but are widely considered valid.

There's also the question of intent on the part of the practitioner. Whether or not a therapy is effective is a matter of fact that can be tested experimentally. Whether or not it's fraud is a matter of if the practitioner believes that it's beneficial.

I agree - this is why NIH sponsored research in Alternative Medicine is important. You'd be amazed at how much NIH funded research in conventional areas is utter nonsense. The key problem with Alternative Medicine is that much of it is anecdotal. The irresponsible thing to do is to simply dismiss it as crackpot medicine, especially when the potential exists to test whether alternative therapies have merit. Which option is better?

Continue to categorize Alternatve Medicine as a separate, parallel track to "Conventional" or "Western" Medicine filled with misinformaton, voodoo and people taking supplements with potentially damaging outcoms.

Use the scientific method to distinguish what works from what doesn't - with the idea of incorporating the best that Alternative Medicine has to offer into everyday healthcare.

Not everyone in medical research is out on a vendetta to disprove Alternative Medicine.

You can't say a perpetual motion machine is impossible, just that it is inconsistent with current theories about how the universe works.

I.e. as impossible as me jumping out of the window and flying, or the moon being flat. If you're going to overturn theories with as much evidence as the Laws of Thermodynamics, you need solid proof. All we want to see is the machine in actual operation, with proof that it will actually run forever.

According to item #15 of The Crackpot Index [ucr.edu], I score your post as +5 (-5 point starting credit + 10 points for arguing that a current well-established theory is "only a theory", as if this were somehow a point against it). Or were you trying to be funny?

I think he was trying to make the point, that however unlikely it is for the laws of thermodynamics to turn out to have a few more special cases, it is possible.

Therefore, before simply dismissing yet another claim of a perpetual motion machine based on the laws of thermodynamics, it is worth while to look over the scientific analysis of the device and then find the caveat the 'discoverer' missed.

Usually the caveat the discoverer missed is that if they want to be taken seriously, they need to do their research in a scientific manner, but occasionally, they'll forget that the power from the sun is powering their device (or something of that nature)

Therefore, before simply dismissing yet another claim of a perpetual motion machine based on the laws of thermodynamics, it is worth while to look over the scientific analysis of the device and then find the caveat the 'discoverer' missed.

Even if it's possible it works, that doesn't mean it's worth the physicist's time to check it out. There has been thousands of "perpetual motion machines", and even one working would mean almost everything we know in physics, stuff that has been shown over and over again, was wrong. If you want to spend your days trying to teach basic physics to people who don't want to learn and who will complain you're oppressing them, go ahead; but some people feel they have more productive things to do.

I think it was Ring Lardner who said (with some borrowing from Ecclesiastes) "The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong--but that's the way to bet."

Sure, it's possible that someone might overturn the "laws" of thermodynamics tomorrow, just as effects that are described by Einstein's Theory of Relativity contradict Newton's mechanics and their notions of absolute time and space...but they've worked well enough that any alleged evidence to the contrary will be gone over with a fine-toothed comb.

There's an even bigger "but" here: even though people agree that Newton got it wrong to that extent, he didn't get it much wrong. It's only in what are to us extreme conditions that the difference is detectable, and engineers use good old Newtonian mechanics to design car motors and the like without worry--the pistons aren't ever going to move at a significant fraction of the speed of light, OK?:) So...even if the laws of thermodynamics differ from the way reality works, chances are for everyday things they'll continue to work as well as they have since the days of Carnot et al.

To a first approximation, mainstream medecine has been peer reviewed, and alternative medecine hasn't. The only way for alternative medecine to become mainstream is to be peer reviewed, at which point it either fails and remains alternative, or it passes and becomes mainstream.

Isn't it funny how all the alternative medecine backers want it accepted without being peer reviewed? Quite interesting...

To say that alternative medicine is placebo flies in the face of every single person who believes in an afterlife and a soul.

Erm, no. That statement is so ludicrous as to be stunning. There is absolutely no connection between on'e belief in afterlife and a soul and one's belief in the claims of alternative medicine. I repeat: no connection.

Of course, if you see a connection, please provide it, because my current level of mystification is really tiring.:-)

The definition of alternative medicine [dictionary.com]. = "A variety of therapeutic or preventive health care practices, such as homeopathy, naturopathy, chiropractic, and herbal medicine, that do not follow generally accepted medical methods and may not have a scientific explanation for their effectiveness."

Let's not forget the other definition: "the practice of medicine without the use of drugs; may involve self-awareness [syn: complementary medicine]"

Notice the part about "variety of therapeutic or preventive health care practices" kind of lump-sums all spiritual and well-being folks in with that. Everyone who believes in miracles and prayer-healing falls under that umbrella. Nearly everyone who believes that we have a soul also believes that the soul can be sick just like the body can. In addition to all of that, don't forget that non-physical sicknesses such as depression and stress can be linked to physical ailments.

...are falling over themselves to give away their power to think for themselves and jump on the popular opinion bandwagon.

I would think that the opposite is true. The popular opinion bandwagon believes in anything that the tabloids publish. How do you think that James Van Praagh and John Edward earn their livelihood? Why do you think that discrediting and debunking meets with such hostility? The list of frauds and fakery and charlatanry which has been clearly and concisely demolished is quite long, yet popular opinion isn't fazed. This is because the mundane doesn't sell advertising. Uri Geller, Nostradamus, the Bermuda Triangle, the aforementioned psychics, all indisputable crap, but it still sells, so it is still spoon-fed to the general public.

The general public, especially in America, is so anti-intellectual and eager to be deceived that anyone with even minimal intelligence is accused of being narrow-minded, as if being wide-minded (no filters, just accept all shit as equally probable and valid because it MIGHT be true) were a virtue.

Skepticism is healthy. Logic and reason aren't dirty words. Yes, many skeptics come across as their own worst enemy (James Randi). They seem arrogant at the very least. However, maybe this is because the tedium of debunking the same shit is exhausting after you have done it for a lifetime and no one notices except for your self-congratulatory peers and their gullible opposites, the "they laughed at Galileo" crowd.

Anyway, that's the end of my rant, now I'm going to go watch something on PBS.:-)

Some cars do use small round brake pads. While getting parts for my car, someone was inspecting some small round pads. I asked if they were for his motorcycle. He said "no, they are for my Honda" I wonder what size car uses 12 inch round brake pads. I wonder what size tires it uses to cover up the brake disk.

I was wondering the same thing. It must be a fake if NASA just spent millions to have one built (in fact the story was posted here awhile back, but I'm too lazy to find a link to it). Kind of makes you wonder about the story posters, huh?

Is getting moderator points the result of not having sex for six months?If that were true, there would only be a few very young moderators. Read the guidelines for the real info./. does not spy on your personal life to issue moderator points.Do I hear a big sigh of relief from the geek communtity?

After some workers found themselves unable to reproduce the results initially claimed by Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann in 1989

Where all workers failed to reproduce an experiment that any lab should have been able to...

He fails to mention here, as the video does, that the small amount of such products anticipated, given the amount of energy generated, was eventually observed, and in just the right quantity.

From what I've read, the amount of radiation that should have been emitted along with the claimed energy release should have easily detected - the physicists would have taken lethal doses of radiation.